{"id":75,"date":"2021-02-08T06:40:59","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T06:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/?p=75"},"modified":"2021-02-08T06:41:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T06:41:00","slug":"station-update-late-notification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Station Update (late notification)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n\n\n<p>Back in mid-December, I found myself searching Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for &#8216;ham radio&#8217; items.  I don&#8217;t know what I was looking for, nothing specifically.  Maybe a CW key or a cheap antenna (I would like a reasonable dual-band UHF\/VHF &#8216;base&#8217; antenna that would be better than my discone) but nothing expensive. Money is tight and I shouldn&#8217;t even be looking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, I spotted an interesting ad on Facebook: an ICOM 7300 ~1-year-old and including a desk microphone for $700.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really didn&#8217;t *need* a new HF rig. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with the Xiegu G90. It functions well and has an amazing list of features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The only complaints I have are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>that the screen is small. Almost too small. I wish it were a little bigger.<\/li><li>Power output is limited to 20 watts &#8211; this is fine most of the time but I found myself wanting a little more&#8230; all the time.<\/li><li> digital operation can be a little buggy<\/li><li>I have to power cycle \/ hard reset the device frequency <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, it&#8217;s an all mode, all band HF rig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to the ICOM 7300&#8230; I contacted the seller thinking that I might like to take a look but knowing that I didn&#8217;t have the dough. I toyed with the idea of making a lower offer and then saying &#8220;sorry, I just don&#8217;t have the cash&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I arranged to drive down to Lincoln (about 45 min away) to take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the whole drive down, I was thinking of different scenarios of how things would play out.  I thought that perhaps it would turn out to be a dud or maybe it was stolen. I&#8217;d offer the guy $650 and then head back to Omaha empty handed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No need to drag this out. I got to the guys house and met him at the door. He had everything boxed up in the living room. We talked for a few minutes and I asked why he was selling his gear. He shared that he was terminally ill and on hospice care and that ham radio no longer had a place in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everything looked good, the rig was clean and looked new. The microphone, an MFJ-299, wasn&#8217;t something I would have picked out for myself (I don&#8217;t do much voice work on HF), but it was also in like-new condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We made a little small talk and I forked over $700, all the while feeling mildly uncomfortable buying this guy&#8217;s rig. Mostly because he was dying. I wished I could offer MORE rather than low balling him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before I walked out, he pulled out a Samlex power supply and offered to sell it to me for $60 &#8211; I had no more cash so I offered to &#8216;venmo&#8217; it to his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All the way home, I cursed myself for buying the gear. But the deal was done. I foolishly left his house without even powering the rig up. (I had brought a few items to do some cursory testing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the course of the next week or two, the guy was calling me every couple days &#8211; initially I thought he was having sellers remorse but he kept finding items that I might be interested in.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I made another trip down and picked up an MFJ manual tuner and an MFJ CW decoder device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been using the ICOM 7300 ever since.  The screen is significantly bigger and the rig has way more features than the Xiegu. It&#8217;s like night and day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus, I now have access to 100 watts, though I&#8217;ve kept the power output down to 50 generally and 75 occasionally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also ordered a mobile dual-band rig, a Yaesu FT-7250D after struggling with those shitty Baofeng rigs. I can now hit plenty of repeaters and have had a few simplex contacts to various points around Omaha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in mid-December, I found myself searching Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for &#8216;ham radio&#8217; items. I don&#8217;t know what I was looking for, nothing specifically. Maybe a CW key or &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","anons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}